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Wanted to start a separate thread for this because in past years it has been fun to answer questions and interact here on Pinside during the sale.

Direct link to sale: https://www.cometpinball.com/pages/black-friday-sale

Black Friday Sale: Starts at midnight (eastern time) on Friday morning (ie: a few hours after your Thanksgiving).

Save up to 30% on the following items (no code necessary):

• 2SMDs are 49 cents each (when bought in 25 packs or 100 packs)
• SMD Retros are 45 cents each (when bought in 25 packs or 100 packs)
• 8SMD flashers are 99 cents each (just the normal flat ones, not towers or flexes)
• Trough lighting kits are $5.49
• Pop bumper discs are $2.99
• Blinking bulbs are 99 cents each

Everything else is regularly priced.

Sorry, no rain checks - when they're gone, they're gone. Quantities are limited in some cases.

As always, all orders over $99 get free shipping.

If you spend more than $199, you get to choose a free gift! Choose from:

• Comet T-shirt (now also in black!)
• Spotlight Kit
• Illuminated Flipper button kit
• Matrix sampler kit
• Kangaroo coin purse
• Clip on Work Light

Limit one gift per customer.

If you already have items in your cart, you will need to refresh your browser once the sale goes live to see the discounted pricing.

FAQ:

Q: Will [name of product not listed above] be part of the sale?
A: Sadly, no.

Q: Do I get candy?
A: Almost certainly (unless you order a single bulb or something, or you're outside the US).

Q: Will Nemo The Shop Dog be picking orders?
A: No. He will be sitting in the aisle, getting in our way.

Q: Is international shipping free if I spend $X?
A: Sadly, no.

Q: When do you play pinball in the office?
A: Never before the mail goes out at 5:29pm. Currently we have a Funhouse and a Wizard of Oz.

Q: If I spend $398+, can I have two free gifts?
A: Sadly, no - gifts are limited.

Q: If I forget something in my order, do I have to pay for shipping again?
A: It depends. Your order confirmation will give you instructions for how to add to your order. If you haven't received a shipping confirmation, then we haven't packed your order yet and you are free to add to it. However, once you've received the shipping confirmation email, it's too late, and you'll need to place another order and pay for shipping again. Please follow this guideline so that your package is not delayed while we track you down and make you pony up for shipping.

Q: That sounded like a threat. Are you threatening me?
A: As of this time, we have yet to employ hired goons for any reason.

Q: Do you eat candy while working in the Comet Pinball office?
A: Ryan will occasionally partake, but only if he hasn't eaten in several hours. I've never seen Greg eat candy, as he is dissuaded by the picture of the aching cartoon tooth that lives in the candy bin. We're currently in possession of a full sized gummy pickle that has gone uneaten for weeks.

Q: Will you run out of some product during the sale?
A: Almost certainly (but hopefully only a handful of our 1000+ products). No matter how hard we try, we cannot seem to satisfy your appetite for bulbs!

Q: You ran out of Trough Lighting Kits, now what?
A: Buy a 10SMD strip of your choice, and then add a 12 inch Matrix wire. That's it! (All you're missing is the brightness adjuster, which are totally optional, but sadly it looks like we're going to run out of those).

Q: What does Retro mean?
A: We use the term "Retro" as a synonym for "same brightness as an incandescent bulb". It means nothing more, and nothing less. We have various styles/colors of Retro: bullets (shape/height of an incandescent), standard (shape/height of our standard sized bulbs), frosted, and clear.

Q: Are these real questions, or are you just making them up?
A: Yes.

Q: Do you have any other sales during the year?
A: No. Anything is possible, but it hasn't happened thus far.

Q: Is "anything" *really* possible?
A: No. It's impossible to put a Cadillac up your nose, according to Steve Martin anyway.

Q: How much longer will this FAQ go on?
A: As long as it has to.

Q: Okay...so it sounds like you've run out of questions, haven't you?
A: Yes.

Put a request in your order notes and we'll do our best. It kind of depends on what we have and how busy we are.

Who do we side with?

(You could also ask for no stickers, but our setup doesn't really give us an easy way to have a universal note like that displayed every time we are filling an order).

You'd want something 12v. Click on our 12v category and look around in there. Opmax would be the most diffused light that spreads wide, and some of the others will be more harsh and/or focused.

This is hilarious. That's like saying: I like ice cream sandwiches, except for that cold white goop in the middle.

Please refer to question 1 of the above FAQ.

Damnit, you win this round!

Yes! This is not unheard of. Our whiteboard says "62 Days Since Last Single Bulb Order", meaning it happened most recently on September 26th. It was a 1SMD blue bayonet bulb, with a clear top. We miss that little guy.

A few years ago, someone wrote in saying that he only needed a single color changing bulb, and asking if we could reduce the shipping cost. He was in Alaska. Sometimes I wonder who he bought that bulb from.

What do you think is the ratio of joy vs rage when people see what candy they got? Is there a giant mountain of uneaten candy spread across the households of US pinheads? Should we open up our store to a market that's thousands of times bigger and just sell candy (that comes with a few free LED bulbs)?

We live near a lot of college kids, so the feds would come knocking if we tried sending out their "candy" to customers.

It's rare, but I have eaten a tiny gummy hotdog out of our candy bin...so you may get your wish.

You'll have 95...assuming you didn't give any to Charles or Sarah. How many did Sarah start with?!? I'm going to have trouble fitting this into the FAQ.

Q: I had my cart all loaded up and ready to go, but now it's empty. How screwed am I?
A: Not screwed at all (, probably)! PM me or email us with the email address you were using and we may be able to do a "cart recovery" for you.

I haven't actually used them yet personally, but I think the regular sized ones should be great (https://www.cometpinball.com/products/retro-smd-bulbs). What do you normally use?

The caveat is that we don't recommend the Retro Bullets for backboxes. They are taller, and thus closer to the backglass/translite, and thus more likely to create a focused spot of light (where generally you'd want light in the backbox to be evenly spread out).

Edit: Also, always go with frosted in the backbox.

So yeah...it seems like the cart won't follow you across devices. <insert smiley face vomiting icon>. This may be something we can fix for next year, but it's not going to help right now for anyone who found out the hard way. I'm so very sorry for anyone this happened to, but I'm not sure how to properly atone for this.

These are awesome suggestions, thanks! I think we will try setting up something like Remember My Cart after the sale (as I'm too nervous to mess with things right beforehand).

For GI, anything works for any era...it's more a matter of taste. What other games does this customer have? If they're all incandescents, then I would go with Retros. (The Bullets came about from requests from people who really wanted the bulbs to be the same height as incandescents...so the look was the same and for some EMs the sockets are sunken pretty far into the playfield/backbox, so the taller ones are easier to grab). If they're all modern games with LEDs, then I'd go with 2SMD (or 1SMD, if that's what is already in them).

This is adorable.

Thanks for the question Murphy! This is our bad for not making it clear enough. All our strips come with connectors (wedge, bayonet, and alligator clips). But...things are tricky with JJP games. Those use 12v for lighting, rather than the 6.3v most other games use. So, you would need to get a 12v strip (https://www.cometpinball.com/products/lighting-strip-12v), which only come in shorter versions. And...it can be difficult to find a place to connect to. One simple option is the coin door, though this means you'd need enough wire to run it to the back of the cabinet and then up the playfield (so that it's not in your way when you lift it up). You could replace the coin door light with this: https://www.cometpinball.com/products/quick-connects and then get a few feet of wire: https://www.cometpinball.com/products/matrix-extension-wires

Does that make sense? It's starting to get trickier with new games that use different voltages and custom light boards with surface mounted leds (rather than socketed bulbs).

Yes, both styles of SMD Retros (bullet, and standard) are on sale. Really curious how these will do...they're new enough that we don't have a lot to go on in terms of projecting how many will sell during the sale.

That's it...no candy for you! (I realize now that I forgot the word "dinner" at the end of that sentence)

This is what we did on our TZ: 50smd strip (attached to the underside of back part of the cabinet...right near where the top edge of the glass slides back into place), 36 inch extension wire, and a brightness adjuster. You can see what that looks like here:

Give me a little more info about what you're trying to do. We have blinking bulbs (and in our Addams Family kit, we used different speeds and brightnesses to give a lightning like effect on the weathervane in the backglass), but I'm not sure that's the right suggestion depending on what you're going for.